HDD damage test.

>>90299
>How can i check for dmg? (physical parts)
Nearly impossible since you can't open them up without causing even more problems.

>How can i check if files were corrupted/dmged ?
Just run scandisk /r in the windows cmd.
Run a surface test on the disk if you are really worried.

You probably can't look for the damage on the parts since you probably can't open it.

Physical damage can't corrupt specific files.

Just test the hard drive. If it works, it works.

>>90308
Thank you?
I ran CMD. and it shows that I have 0 errors.
sounds great BUT odd.
5 HDDs that are at least 3 years old and 0 kb in damaged sectors?

>>90313
It is possible for shock to damage only the sectors under the reading heads (because of them slamming against the disk surface), which could lead to a few files becoming unreadable and the rest of the disk being fine.

>>90322
HDDs have extra sectors that are used to automatically replace bad sectors once you write new data to them. This doesn't mean you never got a bad sector, just that those sectors have already been dealt with.

>>90313
>>90331
Oh, this is new to me.
Ignore what I said before, OP

>>90331
ok so i have 0 damaged sectors.
Does that mean that i have 0 damaged files?
if not how can i find out which files were affected?

were they running when the drop happened?

>>90404
No
They were in a bag with some other things. Bag dropped HDDs first on the ground and then other things in the bag fell on top.

>>90405
they should be fine then

>>90401
If you perform a read-write test on the whole disk and it shows 0 bad sectors, then your HDD is guaranteed to be working perfectly at that moment and you didn't lose any data.

However, the fact that you said you tested 5 HDDs within such a small amount of time tells me that those were quick tests, which are read-only and only go through the filesystem's sectors instead of everything. A thorough test of the whole disk usually takes several hours, since every sector gets read, written to, and then read again.

Follow these instructions:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2641432
and make sure you mark the "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" option.

>>90405
HDDs can sustain much higher forces when they're powered off. In fact many laptops have accelerometers in them so they can turn off the HDD if they detect a fall. Since you already verified that your HDDs are spinning and mounting without any issues, I'd say they are probably undamaged. But you can go ahead and run those tests if you want to be sure.

File: image.jpg (349KB, 1334x750px) Image search: [Google]

349KB, 1334x750px

>>90322
That's not at all unusual.

I have, like, twenty such hard disks. Almost all my hard disks have run, 24/7, for five years or so before being EOLed, and they've all either graduated with no bad sectors, or failed catastrophically.

>>90331
That's all well and good, but you're also smacking the heads that read every sector on the disk, and contaminating the inside of the drive with debris from the crash. If you've headcrashed a drive, its imminent destination should be the bin, only stopping to image it onto an undamaged one.

>>90299
OP, boot to linux, and use dd_rescue to copy the entire drive to /dev/zero with no retrying failed reads.

Then look through the log for the failed reads (if any), subtract the sector your partition starts on from the number, and that's the NTFS cluster that's failed.

There's a program that can look up filenames from cluster numbers, but I forget what it's called.

Once you've got a note of all the filenames, you can restore then from backup* when you're back in Windows.

Then for the overall health of the drive, run smartctl -a on it and see what it says. Non-zero "reallocated sector count" is not really what you want on a drive storing anything that's not redundant. Nor is anything that says FAIL.

* heh.

Did this happen after leaving BestBuy OP??

There are some ways. First make sure there arent obvious mechanical ssues like clicks, beeps or squeaks.

Second make a full surface test, this reads every sector on the disk to find problems. Since it isnt writing at least you know data is safe but it would hurt to make a backup and a full format or zeroing of the disk.

Finally use the manufacturer tool (if it exists) to perform a full checkup, there may be errors that dont directly affect the data and dont make noises. Things like the uncorrectable errors value are good indicators of future failures.